Organized by the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Technische Universität Braunschweig/ Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Hochschule für jüdische Studien Heidelberg, in cooperation with the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, and the Israel Jacobson Netzwerk für jüdische Kultur und Geschichte e.V.

Since antiquity and especially since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE, synagogues have become the central places of gathering of Jewish communities. They are complex, highly significant and polyvalent objects of for religious, social, economic, architectural, and artistic developments in Jewish culture. At the same time, they reflect the interdependencies with the surrounding cultures. Since the holocaust, historic synagogues also gained high importance as focal points of remembrance and education.

However, scholars were interested in the material culture(s) of Jews all over the world well before the holocaust and turned synagogues and their furnishings into a focus of their research. The documentation of synagogues as objects of cultural and historical significance started alongside with the establishment of Jewish ethnography (jüdische Volkskunde) as an academic discipline at the end of the 19th century. They became items of collecting, which were set up in exhibitions and museums. Objects from the religious and cultural practice got ‘musealised’, as well as entire synagogue furnishings and sometimes even architectural elements. After 1945, the interest in synagogues as objects of cultural history continued. Besides ritual objects and furnishings, the ’empty’ buildings of the annihilated communities became objects of interest. Historic synagogue buildings were regarded as museums, their material substance was and is restored and interpreted in different ways. The virtual and haptic reconstruction of destroyed synagogues generated another group of ‘immaterial’ exhibits.

The congress will examine the subject in a wide range of perspectives of theoretical and historical reflections. Historic and actual examples of documenting, collecting, and researching synagogues and their furnishing will shed light on the history, the presence, and the future of synagogues in and as museums.

For registration and any questions, please, contact us by email, synagogen@tu-bs.de; registration should be done by 7 November 2016. A congress fee of 50€ is payable directly at the registration desk; it includes coffee breaks and refreshments, the visit of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum Hinter Aegidien, and the evening events on Tuesday, 22 November.